There are a lot of JavaScript open-source project on GitHub, but let's take a look at 20 essential ones. Among them: React, Vue, Jest, and more. Each one with a repository link.
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JavaScript is one of the most versatile languages in popular use today. It owes its popularity to the fact that JavaScript, along with HTML and CSS forms the core of the World Wide Web, thus enabling us to visualize the internet as we know it today.
Although it was initially designed to serve as a language for scripting front-end web applications, it has evolved to have an almost ubiquitous presence in the world of development. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that JavaScript is the most used language by users of GitHub, which is the world’s largest software development and sharing platform.
GitHub is presently the de-facto platform to share code and open source projects, and naturally, a number of projects are written in JavaScript. In this article, we will take a look at some of best open source JavaScript projects on GitHub.
React is arguably one of the most widely used open source projects in the world. Created by Facebook, this library makes creating user interfaces in web applications effortless. It also makes developing new features extremely easy, and JavaScript developers do not have to worry about changing any pre-existing code.
React Native, which is built on top of React, extends the functionalities of React to mobile applications, making React a widely used platform for development.
Repository link – https://github.com/facebook/react
With the increased interest in machine learning in the past few years, there has been a lot of activity around building better libraries to make creating machine learning models easier. TensorFlow.js is the JavaScript version of the well-known TensorFlow library, which was originally written in Python.
By converting it to JavaScript, it is now possible to build and deploy machine learning models in web applications, thereby making them mobile. TensorFlow.js can train machine learning models in the browser itself, which relieves the server of the computational expenses incurred in training the model.
This can also be extended to mobile applications, although the computational power of mobiles is generally too low for machine learning applications.
Repository link – https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs
Node.js is an Javascript Open source runtime environment. It is built on the Chrome browser’s V8 engine. Without a separate runtime environment, JavaScript can only be run using the environments of browsers. But Node.js enables JavaScript to be used as a standalone scripting language, like Python.
Developers can now test JavaScript on their own machines, instead of having a browser do it for them. This extends the capabilities of JavaScript from only making websites more interactive to just about anything.
Repository link – https://github.com/nodejs/node
AngularJS is one of the oldest Front-End JavaScript open source frameworks in the industry. Initially developed by Miško Hevery, this widely used framework is among the top 10 starred JavaScript projects on GitHub.
Web applications developed by Angular are cross-platform, in that they are compatible across a wide class of devices, be it Mobiles, Desktops or Tablets. AngularJS is on par with the other frameworks in terms of speed, performance and scalability.
AngularJS advertises to provide huge data requirements and a scalable infrastructure that supports large-scale applications, such as that of Google’s.
Repository link – https://github.com/angular/angular.js
jQuery is an open source library that makes client-side HTML scripting easier. Its motto is “Write less, do more”, and it does exactly that. It wraps the most common JavaScript tasks and wraps them into methods. This makes writing code easier and more productive. Estimates put jQuery as the highest used library in web pages.
Repository link – https://github.com/jquery/jquery
npm stands for Node Package Manager, and it does exactly that. It manages your installed Node.js packages and makes it easier to install other packages.
Repository link – https://github.com/npm/cli
Vue.js is the most starred JavaScript open source frameworks on GitHub. Vue.js is an open-source JavaScript framework for building interactive user-interfaces. Focusing on integration with other JavaScript libraries, Vue is designed to simplify and organize web applications. Vue was initially developed by Evan You in 2014.
Vue advertises itself to be a progressive JavaScript framework that is easy to learn, use and maintain.
Repository link – https://github.com/vuejs/vue
Ember is a JavaScript open source framework which allows developers to create scalable single-page web applications, similar to AngularJS. Ember.js focuses on productivity, easy enhancement and developer-friendliness.
Ember.js is one of the most developer-friendly frameworks out there, taking only minutes for a new developer to build an application. Many popular websites like Netflix use Ember.
Repository link – https://github.com/emberjs/ember.js
Meteor is a cross-platform open-source platform for web, mobile and desktop. Meteor integrates with various other JavaScript frameworks seamlessly. MeteorJS focuses on optimizing code size, cross-platform compatibility, and integration into other libraries.
Unlike other frameworks, Meteor is not limited to front-end web applications. Meteor enables rapid prototyping and automatic catering of data changes. It also provides a large interface of enhancements readily available for many use cases.
Repository link – https://github.com/meteor/meteor
Polymer is a JavaScript open source library for building applications using what are called “Web Components”. This provides the developer with the idea of reusable widgets or blocks on the web, facilitating interoperability of individual web elements. This idea is used in many complex projects such as YouTube and Google Earth.
Repository link – https://github.com/Polymer/polymer
Math.js is an extensive math library for JavaScript and Node.js. It has a flexible expression parser and comes with a large set of built-in math functions. It can perform symbolic computation and can also be used as a command line application. What’s more, it’s flexible and can run on any JavaScript Engine.
Repository link – https://github.com/josdejong/mathjs/
Jest is a new JavaScript open source testing framework by Facebook, and it works really well with React.js. It aids in detecting bugs and testing is an integral part of any development process. The biggest advantage of Jest over other testing suites is that it requires minimal configuration to start testing your application.
The response has been very positive to this project, and many are shifting to Jest as their testing suite.
Repository link – https://github.com/facebook/jest
Prettier is a code formatter for JavaScript. It enforces consistency in style and reprints it with a set of rules, such as a defined maximum word length, and so on. It makes writing code easier without having to worry about the indentation and other rules.
Repository link – https://github.com/prettier/prettier
Chance is a random generator helper for JavaScript. It can generate just about anything, from random numbers, characters, to strings, names, dice and pretty much anything else. It is built on top of a Mersenne Twister so that it can enforce repeatability if needed. It can help in writing automated tests, or just about anywhere else you need random stuff.
Repository link – https://github.com/chancejs/chancejs
Chartify is an open-source library that makes building charts using CSS easier. It is a React.js plugin and can be used to create customizable charts.
Repository link – https://github.com/chartify/chartify
localForage is a fast and simple Javascript open source storage library. localForage improves the offline experience of your web app by using asynchronous storage (IndexedDB or WebSQL) with a simple, localStorage-like API.
Repository link – https://github.com/localForage/localForage
Tonejs is an audio framework for web applications to create interactive music. The architecture of this library is aimed to be familiar to both programmers and musicians looking to create music. It provides a global Digital Audio Workstation with prebuilt effects and synths. It also has signal processing blocks to build our own effects, synths and control signals.
Repository link – https://github.com/Tonejs/Tone.js
draw.io is a web diagramming site that provides the source code to be used elsewhere. It uses the mxGraph library as the base. It can be used for almost any kind online drawing applications, and it also lets users save the diagrams to the cloud or to a drive. It supports almost all modern browsers.
Repository link – https://github.com/jgraph/drawio
Mermaid is a simple markdown-like scripting language that makes it easier to generate flowcharts and diagrams. It can create flowcharts from a simple text-based markdown-like script. It can create many kinds of graphs and drawings such as flowcharts, sequence diagrams, Gantt diagrams, etc.
Repository link – https://github.com/knsv/mermaid
Spacetime is a simple JavaScript library that makes comparing, formatting, and manipulating dates and times across the globe easy. It supports daylight savings, leap years, and hemisphere logic.
Repository link – https://github.com/spencermountain/spacetime
Apart from these, there are a lot of other projects that are equally awesome. Some of these projects have some additional features under development, so make sure to stay updated by following their repositories.
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Full-stack software developer with 17 years of professional experience.
Software development enthusiast with 8 years of professional experience in this industry.
Full-stack software developer with 17 years of professional experience.
Software development enthusiast with 8 years of professional experience in this industry.
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